Gil Spencer: Corbett not the first politician to flip-flop

The criticism — and even outrage — at Gov. Tom Corbett for having the bad taste to file a lawsuit against the NCAA in the hopes of reversing some of the most draconian, capricious and abusive sanctions ever levied against a member institution continues unabated.

The governor is being ripped and accused, not only for being a political flip-flopper, but as a man who couldn’t care less about the boys who were abused by Jerry Sandusky.

I have spent the better part of the past week discussing and debating the merits of the governor’s lawsuit, a lawsuit that challenges the authority of the NCAA to have penalized Penn State to the degree it did. And frankly, I am amazed at the weakness of the arguments that I’ve heard and read.

It has been asserted by some that in his lawsuit Corbett makes no mention of Sandusky’s victims. But he does, right there on page 17.

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“The Sandusky Offenses were horrific. The severity of their effect on Sandusky’s victims, the Penn State community, and the Commonwealth as a whole cannot be overstated. Gov. Corbett and the government of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania unequivocally condemn the actions of Jerry Sandusky and the alleged failures of any university official that contributed to the concealment of abuse perpetrated by a despicable child predator.”

There are other references to the child victims, as well. Obviously not as many as some of Corbett’s more vociferous critics would like, but this is, after all, a legal complaint, not a passion play. Moreover, there is nothing in this lawsuit that in any way interferes with or denigrates the rights of the abuse victims to sue Penn State and recover damages for what happened to them.

As to the charge that our governor flip-flopped on this matter, he is certainly guilty of that.

Last year, he said Penn State should accept the sanctions imposed by the NCAA and move on. Six months later, he not only says the opposite, he acts forcefully to have the sanctions overturned.

Now, if it is unacceptable for an elected official to change his mind or flip-flop on any matter of public interest, the least that Corbett’s critics should be willing to do is hold other high office-holders to the same standard. One office-holder in particular comes to mind and he makes Tom Corbett look like Sir Thomas More by comparison.

I am, of course, talking about the current occupant of the 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. If political flip-flopping were an Olympic sport, Barack Obama would have more gold medals than Michael Phelps.

Just for instance, here are a few of Obama’s greatest hits.

In March 2006, he said, “Leadership means that the buck stops here ... I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit”

Five years later as president: “It is not acceptable for us not to raise the debt ceiling and to allow the U.S. government to default.”

And …

“If am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election” — Candidate Obama, 2007.

“We’ve made the decision not to participate in the public financing system for the general election” —- Sen. Obama, June 2008

Also ...

“I will never question the patriotism of others in this campaign.” — Sen. Obama, June 2008.

“The way Bush has done it over the last eight years is… (he) added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back … That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.” — Sen. Obama, July 2008.

There are many more examples of the president’s various flip-flops (Wall Street Journal columnist Kim Strassel has a bunch more) from his Triple Lindy on same-sex marriage to his half-gainer on a single-payer health care system. But these should suffice to show that when it comes to shifting positions for political expediency, Tom Corbett is hardly alone.

And yet, many of Corbett’s most scandalized critics were only too happy to ignore the president’s political U-turns when it came time to consider his re-election. Why? The question, I believe, answers itself.

Just a few years ago, when Ed Rendell, a Democrat, was governor of this state, Steven Ward, a marketing professor at Penn (Rendell’s alma mater) was arrested and charged with possession of child pornography. But that was the least of Prof. Ward’s crimes.

For more than a decade, Ward was known to be an active pedophile by colleagues and administrators at Penn. And yet Ward was not only kept on the faculty, he was allowed to travel overseas for years to sexually abuse dozens — if not hundreds — of young boys all on the university’s dime.

Why was he not stopped sooner?

If the same standard that is being applied to Penn State and Corbett had been applied to that case, there would have been a serious investigation into what Penn administrators knew and when they knew it concerning Ward’s crimes against children.

And what did Rendell ever have to say about his alma mater’s failure to stop Ward? Nothing that I can find. And no wonder. After all, it was on Rendell’s watch as D.A. and then mayor that another serial child predator, the wealthy and politically connected Eddie Savitz allegedly went about sexually exploiting hundreds of boys in Philadelphia from 1978 to 1991.

None of this is to say that I believe Rendell or Penn, as an institution, should be punished for having failed to stop these child predators when maybe they could have.

But It certainly strikes me that anyone who advocates holding Tom Corbett and Penn State to a such high standard of accountability ought to have argued for the same standard in these other cases.

They didn’t.

And why?

They should tell us. Or they should pipe down and quit embarrassing themselves.

Gil Spencer is a columnist for our sister newspaper, The Delaware County Daily Times. Email him at gspencer@delcotimes.comCheck out his spencerblog every day at delcotimes.com